Follow the “woman dressed in the sun” against the “dragon” of materialism,

During the homily for the Solemnity of the Assumption, Benedict XVI invites the faithful to have the “courage to live” like Mary “against all the threats from the dragon” because “love is stronger than selfishness.” He strongly criticises anti-Christian dictatorships: Nazism, Stalinism and materialism. In the Angelus the Pope highlights the solidarity between Our Lady “and the Son, in the struggle and total victory against death.”

(AsiaNews) – Love “is stronger than hatred and selfishness” even in today’s world which is ruled by “the materialist ideology of consumerism and entertainment.” It is Mary who showed us this. “Overcoming death”, she “told us: Courage, love wins in the end!” This is what Benedict XVI said in his homily during the mass celebrated in the Pontifical Parish of San Tommaso da Villanova, in Castel Gandolfo, on the occasion of the Solemnity of the Assumption.
The Pope took inspiration from the apocalyptic image of the “red dragon, the symbol of absolute selfishness, terror and violence” to describe the story of the world as an ongoing “struggle between love and selfishness;” and not only in the age of the Roman Empire or in 1900, but today as well.
“We saw the power of the red dragon realised in the great dictatorships of the last century,” Benedict XVI said. "The dictatorships of Nazism and Stalinism had a power that penetrated every corner. On the long run it seemed impossible that faith could survive such a powerful dragon who sought to devour God who had become a child, and the woman, the Church. But in this case in fact love proved stronger than hatred.”
For the Pontiff today’s dragon is found “in the materialist ideologies that say: It is absurd to think about God. It is absurd to observe God’s Commandments. It is something from a bygone era . . . . Only consumerism, selfishness and fun are worth something. That’s life.”
“Again it seems absurd, impossible to oppose this dominant mentality with all its media and propaganda power. It seems impossible to think about a God who created man, who became a child, the real would-be ruler of the world,” he said.
Benedict XVI finally spoke what Our Lady means, a woman “dressed in the sun, that is to say God.” It is indeed Mary who “overcoming death told us: Courage, love wins in the end! My life means that I am God’s handmaid; my life means giving myself to God and my fellow man as a gift. Have trust, have courage to live thus against all the dragon’s threats. Mary,” he said, “is the sign that love, goodness and God shall win.”
Our Lady also means a “woman who suffers, who must flee, giving birth in crying pain, i.e. the Church, the pilgrim Church of all ages. In all generations the Church must give birth to Christ, bring him into the world in great pain and suffering. Throughout the ages the Church has been persecuted by the dragon.”
“But,” the Pope said, “throughout the ages the Church was nourished by God, nourished with the same bread that is the Holy Eucharist. And thus in all its tribulations, in all the various situations the Church found itself throughout time in the different parts of the world, the Church wins by suffering.”
“And thus the feast day of the Immaculate,” Benedict XVI explained, “is an invitation to trust God and an invitation to imitate Mary,” who said “I am the handmaid of the Lord, I am at the disposal of the Lord.”
Hence the Pope urged us “to give our life rather than take any, setting off on the path of love, which means losing ourselves, a path which alone can let us truly find ourselves as well as find true life.”
In concluding he said: “Let us look upon Mary, the Assunta, and be encouraged in our faith and in the feast of joy: God wins. Faith, which appeared weak, is the real power of the world. Love is stronger than hatred.”
In the late morning the Pope addressed as he usually does the many faithful and pilgrims who crowd the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace for the Angelus.
He used the occasion to highlight the solidarity between “Mother and Son, closely tied in their struggle against the enemy from hell till the total victory over him.”
“As Christ’s glorious resurrection was the final sign of this victory,” he said, “so does the glorification of Mary, including in her virgin body, constitute the final confirmation of Her total solidarity with the Son in both struggle and victory.”
Finally, “Mary did not grow remote from us. We need to feel that she is mother and sister in the concrete situations of our existence,” he said.

Assumption Ramblings

Someone asked this question in the comments box.

Question: I was wondering if you could answer something that has troubled me for a while, regarding the Assumption and the Ascension. In the 'old days' when the world was thought of a three tiered, ie. heaven above, hell below, the images of ascension and assumption, where bodies are physically lifted up to heaven, make sense, as they are geographically heading towards heaven. Our understanding of heaven emphasises the living in joy with God rather than it's physical location. In fact we would say heaven is not physically a place above earth. In light of this could I ask, where did the bodies go?

It is a mystery, which is the obvious answer, but our faith calls us to penetrate mysteries.

I am not sure that we actually ever believed hell was below our feet, or heaven above our heads. For the Jews, God was always totally other, beyond our understanding, beyond time and space, this was why the first commandment prohibits the making of images and why, even, the name of God was utter only once a year by only one of the priests and only in the secrecy of the Holy of Holies. For the Jews God is totally other, even beyond human senses, hence the idea of Incarnation, Suffering, Death and Resurrection are a “stumbling block” to the Jews. In the same way to the Greeks the idea of God was totally other, for Platonists, at best he was the Form of Forms, totally other therefore Christ is “Folly”.

The uniqueness of Christianity is its understanding of God’s involvement in the world and the possibility of man’s involvement in God, the Church for the last 2,000 years has battled to maintain the physicality of Gods presence, in the Incarnation, the Person of Christ, as God-Man, without co-mixture; within the Eucharist, within the Church and with the concept of the Resurrection. The Blessed Virgin Mary above all has been the means of affirming that physicality, first of all in the proclamation of her being the Theotokos, (the Mother of God), the last the declaration of the Assumption of Mary Body and Soul. Practically all serious heresies want to deny the physicality that we find expressed in the Prologue of John’s Gospel, it has always been my problem with Protestantism and the Reformation.

The question to ponder is perhaps: what do we mean by Resurrection of the Body, the risen body of Christ is obviously different from his unrisen body, we also use the term body for the Holy Eucharist and for the Church too, we believe he entered heaven in his body, and sits at the right hand of the Father in his body and will come in his body to judge the living and the dead, and at his voice we will rise in our flesh (our bodies). The Assumption is the last of the doctrines that press home the resurrection of the body, yet it also reminds us that even the saints haven’t yet received their risen bodies ( we have their relics) though they have obviously entered heaven, in some way but they too await the Resurrection.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven

We believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary at the end of her life on earth, did not suffer bodily corruption but was assumed body and soul into heaven.



I am fascinated by the "mechanics" of her assumption. Earlier images show her falling asleep, Christ comes and takes her soul and her body "melts" away into heaven to join her soul, this imagery continues to be the dominant one used in the East. In the west she is seen as the woman in the Apocalypse, clothed in the sun and taken up into heaven. Later images show her just rising into heaven.



The Second Vatican Council, said that what we say of the Virgin Mary we can say of the Church and what we say of the Church we can say of Mary. Therefore the Assumption gives us an insight into the destiny of the whole People of God, our destiny is Heaven, but like Mary we are taken there, by Christ, we don't get there under our own steam. Heaven for us as for Mary is the gift of God, not our right or even our natural homeland. Mary merits it by her Immaculate Conception, we by our Baptism and communion with Christ, but in our case and hers it is pure gift of God.



Because we believe in the "Resurrection of the Body", it is not just our souls that are taken up into Heaven but our bodies too, indeed Mary underlines the necessity of the "flesh" in salvation, through her flesh God comes into the world in flesh, to suffer in the flesh, to give us his flesh, to rise in the flesh and to ascend into Heaven in the flesh and to sit at the righthand of the Father in the flesh and to return to judge the living and the dead in the flesh.

Did Jesuit missionaries help Newton develop calculus?

(CWNews.com) - Scholars in India discovered several key principles of calculus in the 14th century, according to a researcher at the University of Manchester in England. The Indian mathematicians' discoveries may have been passed on to Jesuit missionaries, and then to Isaac Newton-- who is generally credited, along with Gottfried Leibnitz, for introducing calculus 300 years later.
Dr. George Gheverghese Joseph of Manchester says that scholars of the "Kerala School" in India identified the "infinite series" in about 1350, and had been able to calculate the value of pi to 10 decimal places.
"But we've found evidence which goes far beyond that," Joseph says; "for example, there was plenty of opportunity to collect the information as European Jesuits were present in the area at that time." The Jesuit missionaries were well trained in mathematics, he says, and probably brought the discoveries of the Kerala School back to Europe.
Dr. Joseph--the author of The Crest of the Peacock: the Non-European Roots of Mathematics-- argues that historians have given short shrift to the influence that Asian scholars had on the development of European mathematics.

Exorcizo te, creatura aquae

I “made” some Holy Water this morning, and I confess, I did it in the old rite. The modern rite talks about water as being a reminder of baptism and baptism being source of salvation, the blessing of salt, which may be added, refers to Elijah casting salt on the waters, the water and salt casting out evil and cleansing. Depending on which option you choose it mentions the forgiveness of sins, saving from illness and the power of evil
The amazing thing about the old Holy Water is that it is all about entering in conflict with evil and disease. There are no exorcisms in the new rites of blessings whilst in the old rite more or less everything first has to be claimed for Christ before it can be raised to the higher dignity of being blessed. The exorcism for the salt in the old rite ends, “…where you are sprinkled may all evil fantasies depart, and all wickedness, and all diabolic frauds and evil spirits flee…”. Similar words are said over the water “…to drive out devils … to ward of disease … may no breath of contagion linger there, no taint of contagion … if anything threatens the safety or peace … may it be banished”.

What is so significant is the change in theology, the modern rite is sparse, clean cut, and doesn’t really say a lot. The old rite is full of Apocalyptic imagery, well it gives you the feeling of wanting to say, “Tremble, Satan” or “Come on you demons if you think you are tough enough”. With a phial of Holy Water you could conquer the world or at least the Underworld!

I wept

This is a short fim about the consequences of being a priest in China, it is fictional, but intimidation, beatings, imprisonment, torture and even death are part of the life of an underground priest in China.

saturno tip Fr Tim

Well you don’t see that everyday

I was standing at a bus stop near an Anglican Church in the centre of town here, it is going to be closed and probably turned into an hotel. An older woman, presuming I was connected to the Church was saying how sad she thought the closure of this Church was, she was a lapsed Catholic, she was going to catch the No 6, to Whitehawk, one of those not very nice working class estates built on the edge of Brighton. “I don’t go now, it is just not the same, I loved the processions through the streets, I crowned the statue of Mary one year”.

Then on the opposite side of the road was a crocodile of nuns; well six, going two by two. She said, “Well! You don’t see that everyday, do you? They are all the brides of Christ you know. I was brought up by nuns, they were lovely.” Then turning to a young woman, she said, “They spend all their day in prayer you know, they would need to, to live that life”. Then she began to talk about the rigours of the life of “her nuns” andd their kindness too.

Well, then my bus came; I know, I should have stayed to hear the rest of the conversation.

What was important in this woman’s mind was signs, the sign of the Church, you have to pass it get into centre Brighton, it would be the last Church I would close if I was the Anglican bishop. The processions that used to take place were important to her, and indeed to many lapsed Catholics. The sister in their veils were important. I was impressed by her feeling of expertise on the life of veiled nuns, I suspect it would be less certain with the unveiled type. The Benedictine Sister of Grace and Compassion still wear the habit, though most of their postulants come from India nowadays.
When I was being taught liturgy, I remember that we were taught that liturgy “was about signs and symbols which were perceptible to the senses”. A few years ago a document came out from the bishops of England and Wales entitled “The Sign We Give”, I can’t remember any of its contents, but signs are important, a Church building, a street procession, a statue, a group of sisters in habits.
I asked a bishop once to take part in Eucharistic Procession, he found all types of excuses not to do so, all basically focussed on “it’s not my style”.
In a way liberalism is marked by an almost Puritanical or Iconoclastic hatred of signs and symbols, Churches that look like shopping centres, sisters, priests, bishops even in lay clothes. There is a Puritanism here, and like 17th century English Puritanism it is essentially a petit bourgeois movement. I cannot help but think that so much of the rise of liberalism in the Catholic Church was almost a class struggle, a way of casting off the working classes. One of the most significant losses to the Church in this country from 1960 onwards has been working people, people from our housing estates, people who would never dream of standing up and reading in Church. People, who couldn’t necessarily explain their faith, people who want to escape from the mundane, people who need hope.